Session: Wednesday Morning, December 4

Time:

If the first formant (F1) is missing, does the listener treat the second
formant (F2) as the effective ``F1'' or does he/she substitute a default value
for F1? Is stop consonant identification dictated by relational or absolute
formant frequencies (e.g., locus theory)? To answer these questions, an
experiment was carried out in which subjects identified synthetic
consonant--vowel (CV) stimuli where F1 had a transition that rose into the
vowel, had no transition (i.e., a flat transition), or was absent. Listeners
identified stimuli with a rising F1 transition as either /ba/ or /da/ depending
on the F2 transition, and stimuli with no F1 transition as /a/. For stimuli
where F1 was absent and F2 had a rising transition, listeners perceived either
/ba/ or /da/ depending on the F3 transition; and for stimuli with F1 absent and
no F2 transition, listeners perceived /a/. Thus preliminary findings suggest
that when F1 is missing, subjects do indeed treat F2 as ``F1,'' and
respectively, F3 as ``F2,'' leading to the conclusion that stop consonant
identification is not dictated by absolute formant frequencies, but uses
relative measures. The results have implications for models of stop consonant
perception. [Work supported by NIH grant DC00194-02.]